Solo Training–Why Iai?

Some practitioners of modern martial arts deride kata training, claiming that an adherence to form is inherently weak. They claim that one trains stereotyped responses by rote and repetition, thereby rendering oneself unable to respond with freedom to an unpredictable, random attack. On the other hand, one’s freedom is limited by one’s neurological organization  stereotypical patterns of action and reaction entrained through another type of kata training  the repetitive, habitual patterns of movement one arrives at simply by living.